I've been without my tripod for my scope for a few days while it's getting a bit tweaked and haven't been able to do any digiscoping. Non Birding Bill and went out to Mr. Neil's to check on our bees and I found his digital camera with a zoom lens unattended and thought I'd see how the other half lived.

The feeders were bursting with bird activity--especially with rose-breasted grosbeaks. I've never seen any yard like this one that gets such steady activity of grosbeaks all summer long. The love the black-oil sunflower seeds and we also offer them a fancier mix of sunflowers, mixed nuts, fruit and safflower. Above are two male grosbeaks on either side of a female goldfinch.

The best was watching an interaction with a rose-breasted grosbeak on a suet feeder. A downy woodpecker was hanging on the bottom, getting what was left of a suet cake. The grosbeaks and finches would use the top of the feeder has a waiting perch to get to the crowded feeders. I'm not sure if either was at first aware of the other bird's presence.

As the feeder would spin, the downy would crane her head out to see what was going on above. The grosbeak would look around the bottom, detecting some sort of movement, but not sure what exactly what it was.

Finally, they see each other.

And the grosbeak gets freaked out and takes off. The downy flapped her wings to keep her grip and then resumed eating her suet.